BASIC Conventions
BASIC interpreters written in the Seventies tended to "do odd things odd ways." For example, on the Apple II, a programmer could embed a DOS command into a program via PRINT, when prefaced by the character string CHR$(4). PEEK and POKE could be used in various BASICs to examine memory content or change it, or even to create an ad hoc machine language program and then run it. System/34 BASIC tends to stay away from these odd conventions; however, the programmer could call for the Alarm (a buzzing sound made by the terminal) via PRINT CHR$(7).
BASIC statements are expected to be entered in capital letters, and while the operator can press Cmd2 to use lowercase, the BASIC interpreter will convert non-comment keywords into uppercase.
So that BASIC could be useful in a midrange computing environment, IBM added extensions to the language that were specific to the hardware and software conventions of the IBM System/34 Family, such as the WORKSTN file, support for indexed, direct, and sequential disk files, the ability to open and close multiple printer files, and LOAD/SAVE from libraries on the fixed disk.
Read more about this topic: System/34 BASIC
Famous quotes containing the words basic and/or conventions:
“We can’t nourish our children if we don’t nourish ourselves.... Parents who manage to stay married, sane, and connected to each other share one basic characteristic: The ability to protect even small amounts of time together no matter what else is going on in their lives.”
—Ron Taffel (20th century)
“Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole—so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader’s consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)